The Art of Tradition: Irish Music Workshop
On the the 5th of March 2019, our music students in Coolmine were gifted with an outstanding Irish Music workshop on Tuesday afternoon. The Art of Tradition, created by Dr. Martin Tourish and generously supported by the National Concert Hall, is designed to bring to life the Irish traditional music components of the Junior and Leaving Certificate Music courses. It comprises a seventy minute workshop, delivered at the school, in which topics are explained through live performance and complimented by a presentation featuring photographs, notated examples, audio recordings and film. Each music student received a colourful twenty-page booklet of notes, which included details of recorded examples that can be accessed on specially curated YouTube playlists.
Art of Tradition YouTube Playlist
The topics covered included:
- The Harp Tradition
- Tune-Types
- The Song Tradition
- Regional Styles
- Ornamentation
- The Tradition / Innovation Debate
- ·Fusion
The core team that delivered the workshop were Martin Tourish, accordionist with the band Altan, and the acclaimed harpist, TV presenter and singer, Cormac de Barra (Moya Brennan, Clannad).